Our country, Japan, has been experiencing an aging society, particularly, a super aging society where an aging rate of the population aged 65 and older to the total population exceeds 21% because of improvements in living standards, sanitary conditions and medical levels accompanying with the rapid economic growth after the war. Also, the population aged 65 and older is expected to reach approximately 34,560,000 to the total population of 124,110,000 in 2020, while the population aged 65 and older was approximately 25,560,000 to the total population of approximately 127,650,000 in 2005. This aging society is expected to have a greater number of nursing or care needers (nursing needers or the like) due to illnesses, injuries or aging than a non-aging society. Moreover, our country also has been experiencing a declining-birth rate society, for example, the total fertility rate was 1.43 in 2013. This circumstance has also caused a problem of “care of an elderly person by another elderly person”, which means that an elderly person who requires nursing or the like has to be taken care of by an elderly family member such as a spouse, child, or sibling.
The nursing needers or the like enter hospitals or facilities like welfare facilities (including short-stay facilities, care homes, intensive care homes, and the like referred by Japanese statutory laws) for the elderly, and receive nursing or care. These facilities face risks that nursing needers or the like get injuries by falling down from beds or falling over during walking, or loiter after sneaking out of the beds. In consideration that it is necessary to eliminate the risks as soon as possible and that the risks may lead to more serious problems if being left without any countermeasures, nurses and caregivers or the like confirm the safety or check the state of each of the nursing needers or the like through regular patrols.
However, the nursing and care industries encounter a problem of chronic labor shortage due to a slower increase in the number of nurses or the like than in the number of nursing needers or the like. Furthermore, compared with the day time, a workload per nurse or caregiver is much heavier during the semi-night time and the night time because of a decrease in the number of nurses or caregivers during those times. Hence, there has been a demand of reduction in the workload. Moreover, the aforementioned problem of “care of an elderly person by another elderly person” is seen in the facilities as well without exception, i.e., it is often recognized that an elderly nurse or the like has to take care of an elderly care needer or the like. Generally, as one gets older, his or her physical strength declines. This means that the nursing workload is harder for an older nurse than for a younger nurse regardless of his or her good health, and the older nurse is considered to delay in movement or judgment.
In order to alleviate the labor shortage and the workload of the nurses or the like, technologies of supporting the nursing and caring workloads have been demanded. In response to this demand, subject observation apparatuses have been recently researched and developed to observe (monitor) a subject as a watching target, such as a nursing needer or the like, to be observed.
The technologies involve an exemplary call system disclosed in Patent Literature 1. The call system disclosed in Patent Literature 1 includes a subsidiary nurse call device allotted to a bed for allowing a patient to call a nurse, and a host nurse call device arranged in a nurse station for answering to the calling from the subsidiary nurse call device, and further has a camera for photographing the patient on the bed from a higher position than the bed, and state judging means for judging an occurrence of at least one of the states of the patient, i.e., raising his/her upper body and leaving away from the bed, thereby outputting a caution state occurrence signal. The host nurse call device has notification means for performing a notification upon receipt of the caution state occurrence signal. Also, the nurse call system further includes a mobile terminal carried by the nurse in order to answer to the calling from the subsidiary nurse call device, and communication control means for sending a video image photographed by the camera to the mobile terminal upon receipt of the caution state occurrence signal.
Meanwhile, a person living alone is also a subject to be observed as well as the nursing needer or the like in terms of safety confirmation.
Moreover, in the nurse call system disclosed in Patent Literature 1, a caution state occurrence is notified to the mobile terminal (for example, paragraph [0029] of Patent Literature 1). However, Patent Literature 1 does not disclose any way of displaying a new caution state occurrence on the mobile terminal having received information thereof, and thus it is unclear how the new caution state occurrence is displayed. If the new caution state occurrence overlaps a previously notified caution state occurrence so as to be displayed, there is a risk of delay in an action (execution, reply) to a patient who is in a state in connection with to the previously notified caution state occurrence.